13 June 2013 NSA to release details of attacks it claims were foiled by surveillanceSenator says spy agency will provide 'cases where surveillance has stopped a terrorist attack' as early as Monday
By Spencer Ackerman
The Guardian

The National Security Agency (NSA) plans to release details of
terrorist attacks thwarted by its controversial bulk surveillance of
Americans’ communications data, a senior US senator said on Thursday.

Senator Dianne Feinstein (Democrat, California), the chairwoman of the
Senate intelligence committee, said the NSA director, General Keith
Alexander, would provide “the cases where this [surveillance] has
stopped a terrorist attack, both here and in other places” as early as
Monday.

The claim that the surveillance programs helped stop terrorist
attacks has come under criticism from two US senators who sit on the
intelligence committee.

“When you're talking about important liberties that the American
people feel strongly about, and you want to have an intelligence
program, you've got to make a case for why it provides unique value to
the [intelligence] community atop what they can already have," Senator
Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat,
told the Guardian in an interview on Thursday.

But the FBI director, Robert Mueller, forcefully defended the
programs on Thursday to the House judiciary committee by saying the
broad surveillance could have foiled the 9/11 attacks and averted “another
Boston”.

Feinstein’s comments followed an afternoon briefing attended by 47
senators about two NSA programs recently disclosed by the Guardian:
one that collects the phone records of millions of Americans; and
another, known as Prism, that targets the online communications of
individuals believed to be outside the US. For many senators, it was
their first exposure to the details of how the programs operate.

Yet the programs may soon change. Feinstein said she had “tasked
director [of national intelligence James] Clapper to consider the
program, to present some changes, if he feels it necessary. We will
consider changes.”

She added: “We will certainly have legislation which will limit or
prevent contractors from handling highly classified technical data.”

The Los Angeles Times reported that Edward Snowden, a former Booz
Allen Hamilton contractor to the NSA,
used a thumb drive to exfiltrate data about the surveillance
programs to the Guardian and the Washington Post.

Feinstein also cleared up a lingering uncertainty about the role of
the courts in overseeing the NSA’s ability to comb through its
database of the phone records of millions of Americans. The NSA has
the ability to search the database unilaterally.

“To search the database you have to have reasonable, articulable
cause to believe that an individual is connected to a terrorist
group,” Feinstein said. “Then you can get the numbers. If you want to
collect content, then you get a court order.”

Pressed by the Guardian if that meant the NSA did not require a
court order to search through the database, she replied, “That’s my
understanding.”

In a heated Senate appropriations committee hearing on Wednesday,
the NSA chief, General Alexander, said: “We don't get to swim through
the data,” and that searching through it requires a “very deliberate
process.” But that process is not overseen by a judge ahead of time,
according to the Senate intelligence committee chairwoman.

Feinstein also said that before any content could be searched
pursuant to a court order, all the NSA possesses is “the name and the
number called, whether it’s one number or two”.

Yet US intelligence leaders have firmly denied its phone-records
databases contain any names of any subscribers.

“The information acquired does not include the content of any
communications or the identity of any subscriber,” according to a 6
June
factsheet released by Clapper. It is unclear if Feinstein misspoke
or learned new information at the briefing, as she spoke to reporters
for about four minutes before leaving to catch a plane.